Conviction or Control?

Convictions are personal, not to be exactly mimicked and duplicated or used to manipulate or coerce others. I think what inspires me most are people who live right, and love Jesus but don’t push it with words or use phrases like “God told me” to get their way or stop a conversation because they’re too immature or thoughtless to have the discussion and hear another view. People who are genuinely under conviction, not condemnation, are free. And free people don’t feel the need to make weighty bonds and yokes for others. They understand that in Christ, there is true liberty and anything else is not from God.

Thee In-Between:

I find myself living in the in-between, standing in a doorway of sorts, not in or out but somewhere…in between. Identity is a precarious thing. A relationship with self is often, just as complicated as or even more so than all my other relationships. It ebbs and it flows, and sometimes it just exists – in between the two.

Part of the reason I find myself squinting in this season of twilight is because of my own choices. I’ve become somewhat unengaged and therefore un-engaging in recent months. Pre-motherhood has brought out a side of me that is very person and tremendously private. I have no energy or desire to put myself out there, to invite human drama into my life. Relationships seen too complicated to navigate suddenly.

Another aspect of this identity dilemma is fairly obvious. I don’t pray often. Mostly, I don’t pray because my prayers are very singular focused. There is one thing I have been begging for in, I believe, alignment with God’s will and yet it remains unanswered. I try to trust but after months and months of seeking in silence, the silence has numbed me. I go through the motions but there is no heart behind the petition, no true communion.

Also, I work in a church. It’s hard not to become jaded and unwilling to engage God as He is, not who others model or say He is. I’ve had moments of outrage and moments of tender compassion over these past few years of working in a church but lately, mostly, I just feel…nothing. The grace is gone. The passion has left. I do my work well out of obligation, nothing more and nothing less.

Lastly, I recently lost my best friend of eight years. We had a falling out and the relationship is severed, irrevocably broken. And I am sad.

The culmination of pregnancy, spiritual blockades and grief has left me…waning. Not in who I believe God is but in who I know myself to be, which has a way of changing all my relationships, even with my own self. I used to know who I was and if I forgot or got lost along the way my best friend would remind me or my church would dictate to me or my lifestyle would determine on my behalf but now, silence. It’s unwritten, neither hot nor cold, light or dark. Not in or out but somewhere…in between.

So I stand, unsure of going forward and having come too far to go back. I’m not frozen, just decidedly dormant.

As a typically impetuous person who usually does not spend a great deal of time thinking through decisions before I make them, I have to say, this doorway of dormancy is quite possibly a first for me. Since I am so rarely in between, I have to admit, I am quite literally blindsided by the force of…standing still.

And I don’t know where to go from here. So I wait. And I hope that, maybe, my life will be redefined by motherhood and that somewhere in all of this, there will be new beginnings.

Baby News

My sister and mother threw my baby shower this past weekend. It was beautiful! Work also threw me a shower today. I feel very lucky to have so many wonderful women in my life who go the extra mile to bless me and my new little family.

The nursery is coming together! Tiny little clothes are washed and in drawers, diapers are stacked, bedding is here and the crib is set up.

All we need now is our son! 6.5 weeks to go.

The Doldrums

I feel like I’m sitting on a ship, oh so close to my destination but completely unable to move. The wind has died, the sails are flat and there is absolutely nothing I can do to move ahead. I have done all I can, and still I sit.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting for the wind, waiting for something to happen…waiting for the birth of our son. Have I ever told you how much I hate waiting?

I am a planner - a person of action, a producer. I’m not used to relying on time to pass for things to happen and yet, here I sit. Pregnant with hope and anticipation and anxiousness, so close to land, to delivery, to our new life but not quite there; rendered useless in planning our arrival. His arrival.

New life, the new land we’re about to discover – the destination is so close and yet so far away. The land with baby - the life where I am not my own, or even my husband’s - the destination where I am mother. The life that I have dreamed of since I was a little girl is within reach but the ship has stopped.

Damn unpredictable wind.

I can’t wait. And yet it’s all I can do, day after day. I feel so useless.
Help me God, to be patient. Holy Spirit, breath on us.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- Coleridge

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean

Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and Jesus

A friend sent me the first book in the Twilight series for my birthday. After the fifth page, I was consumed for two weeks until I finished the last in the series of four books. Very good read; even though it is, essentially, a teenage love story. I have a thing for vampires, the good ones at least, thus my obsession with CW’s, The Vampire Diaries. I honestly think it’s the best show on television, though I get a lot of slack for saying so. I think it’s the internal battle for morality that captivates me. I’m a sucker for good vs. evil. (pun intended)

Stefan in The Vampire Diaries, Edward in Twilight…the eternal struggle of doing right when nature calls to do wrong. It’s not a new story; it’s thee epic story – the story that most world religions are based upon. We all need redemption. We can abstain and fight our inherent sinful natures but in the end, nature usually overrides. A vampire’s natural tendency is to drink blood. My natural tendency is to sin, to covet and lie and steal. Abstinence isn’t enough. It is impossible to live sinless in this broken place. Perfect morality is unattainable.

Also, intricately intermingled in these teenage dramas are passionate love stories…Edward and Bella, Stefan and Elena – the lengths and heights they are all willing to go to love and be loved. They overcome legitimate fears and self-protection in order to fight for the one they love because they know what we all should know; love redeems even the most basic instincts and natural cravings. Love conquers all; always. If we let it.

The love affair that redeems humanity is Jesus. His sacrifice is what makes me clean and gives me hope for the future. God’s love story with the world is the great hope and true salvation. Like the “good vampires,” we can all try to be moral and live well but without the hope of glory, redeeming love, saving grace, we are doomed.

I’ve based my life on the concept; I’ve chosen to give my heart to the one who died on a cross so I could live. Not flawlessly, but following a path of honesty and seeking. I believe good wins, in the end. Love finds a way to redeem even the most hideous of human behaviors. Like Edward, like Stefan, the trying is the mark of good and while perfection is impossible, it’s the journey toward the light – in opposition to the darkness – that changes sinners into saints.